


Golden

by R00bs_Teacup



Category: Grantchester (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Sick Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-16 02:19:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8082892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/R00bs_Teacup/pseuds/R00bs_Teacup
Summary: It's raining. There's bed sharing, and kissing, and hurt/comfort.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [glim](https://archiveofourown.org/users/glim/gifts).



> Here you go, Glim. For a rainy Monday (it's raining here anyway), as a prize for Not Being a Sloth :) Sorry it's not Geordie. I watched the finale episode of series two and wanted Leonard to be happy.

It’s raining, Leonard wakes to it against the roof. He’s in Sidney’s room, not his own. Leonard still does classes and sessions with the young people, which is what he’d been doing yesterday, and how he’d ended up here. They’d been horrible, about homosexuals, yesterday. Leonard had just sat there, his bible on his knees, and listened to the terrible things they thought of him. He hadn’t dared say a word, in case it gave him away. Sidney had found him crying, on staggering in from the pub. Drenched in whiskey, smelling of cigarettes, he’d just collared Leonard and brought him to bed. 

He’s laid out on his front, now, arm hanging off the bed, sheet around his hips. His back’s bare, a bruise climbing over his side and ribs, hair a mess. The sun filtering in lights his hair like fire, so bright and riotous, unruly. The hand that isn’t on the bed is on Leonard’s hip, fingers curled just a little over the bone. His face is turned sideways, mouth open. He still smells like whiskey and cigarettes. He shifts, heaving onto his side, still facing Leonard. The movement makes the bedding fall away, and Sidney’s naked, not a stitch on him. Leonard makes a surprised sound and looks quickly away, startled and flustered. Sidney’s a beautiful man. 

Leonard hurries out of bed and to his own room, before Mrs. M catches him in there, with Sidney like that. He dresses quickly and washes his face and neck before tripping downstairs. He wakes Dickens, and, seeing as no one else is up or even awake yet, he takes the dog and his jacket and an umbrella, and makes off for the meadow and the river. It’s raining much harder than he’d thought it was, but it’s a cathartic sort of rain- washing everything away. A flood. A cleansing flood, taking all the cruelty from the world. Leonard folds his umbrella and sets his face up to it, breathing deeply, laughing, the smell of the earth and the grass all around him. 

Sidney’s stood in the doorway, when he gets back. Looking a little worse for wear, but in shirt and trousers now. He laughs when he sees Leonard coming, soaked to the skin, smiling like a fool. Leonard smiles wider, a little sheepish, and holds his arms out in an expansive shrug, umbrella dangling off one. Sidney smiles at him, laughter but not amusement fading. He whistles for Dickens and crouches, a towel in his arms, rubbing the dog down, finally looking away from Leonard. 

“I can do that,” Leonard says. 

“I’m going to need to get another for you,” Sidney says, straightening, letting Dickens into the house, tugging at Leonard’s jacket. “Mrs. M will not be pleased if you bring all that rain inside.”

Leonard shrugs, steps past Sidney. Neither Mrs. M nor Amanda, still staying with them until she decides what she wants to do, are up. Leonard hesitates, then unbuttons his jacket and shirt and trousers, stripping down to his underwear with quick carelessness, throwing decency to the wind. He stands before Sidney, naked but for his underwear, feet bare. Sidney smiles with half his mouth, then laughs, smile spreading to another full-fledged one.  
“I’ll go get that towel,” Sidney says. “And warn Mrs. M not to come down for a bit. And put the kettle on. Do you want dry clothes?”

“Yes please,” Leonard says. 

Sidney clatters up the stairs, and Leonard hears him talking to Mrs. M on the stairs. He returns quickly with clothes and towel. He takes Leonard’s wet things and goes to put the kettle on, leaving Leonard to dry off and dress in privacy. Leonard’s doing the buttons of his shirt when something makes him look up. Sidney back, standing in the doorway, eyes on Leonard’s hands. Leonard finishes his buttons in a fluster, and messes up his shoe laces. 

“Tea,” Sidney says. “In the parlour.”

Leonard goes through, and Sidney serves him as if he were a guest. Except that he’s let Dickens on the couch next to Leonard. Mrs. M tires of being stuck upstairs and they hear her coming, and Sidney pushes Dickens down to flop on their feet instead. They both sip their tea, trying to look innocent. She gives them a very distrustful look, and once she’s gone Sidney laughs again, stifling it behind his hands. 

“What on earth made you go out in that?” Sidney asks. “It wasn’t me, was it? I apologise for sleeping without my pyjamas, I had a bit of trouble getting into them last night.”

“You had a bit of trouble doing anything, last night,” Leonard says.

“Yes, indeed,” Sidney says. 

“It wasn’t you,” Leonard says. “I just took the dog out, and then I was thinking about the story of Noah, and how cleansing rain is, and I just wanted to stand in it. So, I did.”

“Most think of rain as a little depressing,” Sidney says, eyes finding the window, glazing over a little. Then he shakes himself. “Let’s hope you don’t catch cold from it.”

“Here’s hoping.”

“I tell you what, you promise not to stand in the rain looking for a chill, and I will promise not to send you out in it through drunken nudity,” Sidney says. 

Leonard nods, not bothering to say again that he hadn’t been sent running into the rain by Sidney’s nakedness. 

**

Neither of them, it turns out, can keep those promises. A week later Geordie calls with the news that Sidney is feverish and no use to them on the case and should be in bed. Leonard waits in the doorway, shivering, until Geordie pulls up in the car and runs around to the passenger side, rain beating down on him. Sidney’s barely able to stand. Leonard runs out into the rain, without an umbrella or coat, and goes to help. Between them, he and Geordie get Sidney into the drawing room, the curtains and door closed. Sidney sags against Geordie, eyes heavy. 

“You’re wet,” he tells Leonard. “There goes our agreement.”

“What agreement?” Geordie says, then waves it away. “We need to get these wet things off.”

“I’ve got towels here already, and blankets, and his pyjamas,” Leonard says. “We’re about to break the other half of our promise, Sidney. Come on, let’s get you dry.”

Geordie’s hands are too cold for buttons, so Leonard gets them. The both help get him out of his trousers and shirt and vest, holding him up, manhandling him from his clothes. Eventually they have him naked, wrapped in blankets. Geordie scrubs at Sidney’s hair with a towel, and he comes out looking pink-cheeked, very pale, and bemused. Leonard wraps another blanket around him. 

“Let’s get him warm before we put him in those pyjamas,” Geordie says. “He all but fainted at the station, I hadn’t realised he was ill.”

“Nor had I,” Leonard says. “He was drunk, yesterday evening, and he seemed a little pale and unsteady this morning, but I thought it was the whiskey. Mrs. M had the kettle on, I’ll go see about tea.”

Mrs. M sends him back with tea, thick and sweet with honey, another blanket, thick socks, and Dickens. Sidney’s staggering out of the drawing room towards the stairs, Geordie following behind with pyjamas. Leonard follows on at the back. They pass Amanda on the stairs and Geordie laughs about Sidney still being entirely nude beneath the blankets, making polite conversation with Amanda. She goes down to the kitchen to see about a hot water bottle, and Sidney makes it to his bed, falling across it in a sprawl of pale limbs, golden in the light from the window, filtered through the rain. 

“I really like her, Geordie,” Sidney mumbles. 

“Yeah, we’d noticed,” Geordie says, hauling Sidney to sit up. “Leonard, come keep him upright while I get these pyjamas on.”

Leonard takes Geordie’s place, and Sidney lets out a long sighs, folding against Leonard’s chest, head on his shoulder, body heavy and tired in Leonard’s arms. Geordie snorts and threads Sidney into the top and bottoms before shifting him in order to get at the buttons. It takes both of them to get him under a pile of blankets, propped against pillows. When they hand him the tea his hands shake and slosh the hot liquid, so Geordie sits up next to him, and helps, arm around Sidney’s shoulders. Leonard turns away, finding Mrs. M’s socks and then unearthing Sidney’s bare feet from the covers, rolling the wool over them. They’re freezing, so Leonard gives them a warm rub.

“Why don’t you get out of those wet things, too?” Geordie says. “I had my coat, I’m fairly dry, but you’re wet.”

Leonard nods, but he gets Dickens up on the bed before retreating to his room to change. When he returns, Sidney’s slumped against Geordie’s side, Amanda’s sat in a chair beside the bed, and Mrs. M is bustling around the room setting things to rights and finding handkerchiefs and who knows what. Leonard hovers at the end of the bed, petting Dickens. 

“Right. Let’s take your temperature,” Amanda says. “Open wide, Sidney.”

Sidney does as he’s told. His fever isn’t actually too high, which leads to confusion about the state of him. 

“He’s exhausted,” Leonard says, when everyone’s been debating it for a while. “He hasn’t been sleeping, and he’s been drinking a lot.”

Haven’t you noticed? He wants to add. He can see from their faces, though, that they have noticed. They just weren’t acknowledging it. Mrs. M and Amanda get up and bustle around before retreating to the kitchen, to make soup. 

“Can Amanda cook?” Geordie asks. “My Kathy will want to send something round for you, when I tell her you’re in a state. Again.”

“You should go home to her,” Sidney says. “I’m fine.”

“I can’t,” Geordie says. 

“Why?” Sidney asks, a little muffled. 

“You’re currently using me as a large pillow,” Geordie says. 

“Oh. Well then, swap with Leonard. Go to Kathy.”

“You just want her to cook you good things,” Geordie grumbles, but he begins extracting himself from Sidney’s limp sprawl of limbs. 

Leonard climbs onto the bed and takes his place, sitting stiff against the hard rails, unsure what to do. Geordie tuts and makes him sit forwards, stuffing a pillow behind him, then makes him sit back, and then arranges Sidney on top of him, face against Leonard’s chest. One of Sidney’s hands lands over Leonard’s heart. Geordie nods in satisfaction, bends to kiss Sidney’s hair, and then leaves. 

“How does that man not know he’s in love with you?” Leonard mutters, when Geordie’s shut the door and his steps retreated. 

“He knows,” Sidney mumbles. “He’s just Not A Homosexual. ‘s not a thing that ‘as entered ‘is ‘ead. It’s friendship, f’r’im.”

“And for you?”

“He’s my best friend,” Sidney says. 

“He’s your best friend, and Amanda’s your true love,” Leonard says, nodding. That feels right. Not that Sidney seems to love Geordie less than Geordie loves Sidney, but Sidney’s more the type to categorize things than Geordie. Geordie’s more likely to just let things be, without labeling them. He loves Sidney, that’s all that matters to him. 

“You I love,” Sidney says, hand rubbing over Leonard’s chest. “Like this, and without your clothes, and preaching on a Sunday. Crying over a broken heart in the kitchen. Sleeping in my bed. Walking in the rain.”

“Sidney,” Leonard whispers.

“Mm. I’m not too feverish,” Sidney says, tipping his head up. “I know you’ve been kissed before.”

Leonard has, and he’s kissed people. He never thought he’d be kissing Sidney Chambers, in bed, while the rain comes pelting down outside, though. He looks into Sidney’s face for a long time before succumbing to temptation. He gathers Sidney close and presses a kiss to his dry lips, chaste and gentle. Sidney huffs and lifts his chin, deepening it. 

“Mrs. M’s coming,” Leonard whispers. 

Sidney settles down against Leonard’s chest and pretends to be asleep while Mrs. M and Amanda fuss around the room again. By the time they’ve gone, he’s really asleep. He sleeps restlessly, face flushed, eyes moving restlessly under his lids. Leonards stays sat with him, trying to sooth him, rubbing his shoulders. When Sidney wakes he complains about shaky, aching limbs, so Leonard rubs his arms and legs, too, until Sidney dozes off again. Mrs. M brings water and a cloth, and they sponge the sweat off Sidney’s skin, which seems to settle him for a while. Leonard does it when he dreams, and it seems to help. 

By the evening his fever’s rising a little, and he’s started coughing. Leonard shifts him so he’s more upright, wraps the blankets tighter, and feeds him soup from Amanda, and some warm apple sauce that Kathy sent around with Geordie. Geordie stays for a bit, talking about the case, and then leaves. Amanda comes in to say goodnight before going to bed, and then Mrs. M comes in to check Sidney’s fever and replace the hot water bottle with a fresh, hot, one. Sidney shifts and shivers in Leonard’s arms. 

“Wake me if he gets worse,” Mrs. M whispers, before also retreating to bed. 

Sidney coughs roughly, head heavy on Leonard’s shoulder, and then follows it up with a messy sneeze. Leonard fetches him a handkerchief off the dresser, and Sidney falls asleep holding it to his face. About midnight, Leonard gives in and gets up, laying Sidney against the pillows. Sidney wakes at once and makes a small complaining noise. 

“I’m going to sit here,” Leonard whispers, perching on the chair. “Then it won’t disturb you when I stretch, or move. Or need the bathroom.”

“Just lie down with me, then it won’t disturb me either,” Sidney whispers back. “You kissed me. The others will just think you slept here to watch me.”

“I am sleeping here to watch you,” Leonard points out. 

He gets into the bed, though. He removes his waistcoat but keeps the rest on. When he’s lying down, on his back, Sidney sprawls over him with a sigh and a coughing fit. Leonard pats his back until he’s done. Sidney’s hot and heavy, but it’s not uncomfortable. Nor is it disagreeable. To sleep in Sidney’s arms is not something Leonard’s really thought about much. Or it hadn’t been until it happened last week. Right now, it feels safe, and warm. Leonard falls asleep to the slight rasp of Sidney’s breathing. 

He wakes to Sidney sneezing into his shoulder, half asleep still. He feels sweaty, against Leonard, but not so hot. Leonard yawns and waits for the sneezing to turn into coughing and then to stop, then reaches for the thermometer. The fever’s mostly gone, which is a relief. Sidney’s asleep again, when his temperature’s been taken, mostly on top of Leonard still. He’s dreaming, and it doesn’t seem like a particularly happy one, so Leonard shakes him gently awake. Sidney wakes coughing again, and sits up, covering his mouth with his arm. 

“You’re fever’s right down,” Leonard says. “It doesn’t seem like other symptoms are being so agreeable, though.”

“No,” Sidney agrees, then sneezes twice. “Handkerchief?”

“On the dresser,” Leonard says, passing him one. “Bless you.”

Sidney doesn’t bring up the kiss from last night. Leonard thinks perhaps it was from the fever. However, when he gets up, Sidney calls him back. He’s sat in the middle of the bed, covers and blankets and pillows a mess around him, looking up at Leonard. His cheeks are still a little flushes, his nose is pink, and he looks ill. He also looks like Sidney. Broad, strong shoulders, warm pale skin, bright hair. Leonard steps nervously closer, and Sidney reaches up, tucking his hand between the buttons of Leonard’s shirt, drawing him down. He doesn’t do anything, just waits until Leonard does, but when Leonard places a careful kiss against his cheek, he turns and catches Leonard’s mouth again, hot and insistent. 

“Good Morning,” Sidney says, when he pulls back. 

“Um, yes,” Leonard agrees, blushing. “Yes, it is.”

Sidney smiles at him, then sneezes harshly, coughs, and flops back onto the bed with a groan. 

“I hate colds,” Sidney grumbles. 

“Even when it means I sit with you, to write my sermon? Seeing as you’re not taking the service until you’re better,” Leonard says. “I need to work somewhere, and I can hardly use your office, can I?”

Sidney smiles again, but is once more cut off with sneezes and coughs. Leonard passes him a fresh handkerchief and goes to fetch his work.


End file.
